77 to 81

77# Groth Morchaint

Flayed Tattoo

The image of a woman striping off the ink that makes her up as if it were clothes.

Somehow stepping out of the representation of herself. This image is either uncompleted or decayed. Not in its full self, but which is hard to tell. The woman is a blur of form.

78# Broke-His-Foot

Oil on skin

Ethnographic painting of an elder Olm

This ancient Olm projects such an impression of awareness he seems to listen to the observer through the skin itself. The subject wears multiple symbols of tribal status, the ruff of an Alkalion cascades down his narrow shoulders, a javelin of real wood with an atlatl of human bone, the fingers of one hand play idly with a blurred occultum disk. (Olm are the only under-race not to value Occultum with ferocity. They treat it as a toy and seem to enjoy doing so in front of guests.) He also wears an necklace of linked birdbones and folds a Gegenshin cloak over his arm.

79# Golem Cage

Not a painting but a cage of living light and shadow mixed.

Shadows can be bound by sorcery. Golems can by likewise made, but never bound, the only thing to hold their irreducible edges are shadows already bound. Both were used by the terrifying power of the mage that made this, pirely for aesthetic effect. An underworld scene, the light-pooled ocean of the nightmare sea reflecting from the wings of a cloud of flying fish and from the glimmering vault that roofs that ocean. All is quiet, calm and at peace. The light seems to glimmer as alive because it is. The shadows seem to move because they do. They are both alive and trapped together in the frame, tortured in eternal conflict, simply for a pictures sake.

80# The Citadel of Moths

Panels of a panorama.

Tattooed e-masse on stitched-together skins.

This is damaged and the vital knowledge sought by treasure hunters is either decayed or gone. Needled over decades on, and by, teams of skilled slaves and often replaced, the pieces left show city sections separated by years. The growth and decay of the culture flickers past, thriving streets giving way to empty colonnades. The ocean rising inevitably in every fourth section, cutting off the deep background. The sea-grey stone of the Citadel of Moths stands against the enveloping dark like a blurred mirage.

81# Idol from a Garden of Rocks.

Painted stone, wickerwork and cloth.

This is a simple male figure wearing a round hat. A happy man. Friend to animals and living things. His skin is dark from life above, he smiles. This is the brightest, most human thing you have seen underground. It almost glows, not with the light of the sun, but life. He is draped with colourful beads.  Each bead hold a tiny image of an animal, all are from the sunlit lands, none from below.  White horses, cats, dogs, birds, dashing cows, giraffes and many more.